How popular is the baby name Tessie in the United States right now? How popular was it historically? Use the popularity graph and data table below to find out! Plus, see all the blog posts that mention the name Tessie.
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In the 1960s, the Tessie-like name Tressy began popped up in the U.S. baby name data:
1968: 15 baby girls named Tressy
1967: 17 baby girls named Tressy
1966: 23 baby girls named Tressy
1965: 33 baby girls named Tressy [peak]
1964: 16 baby girls named Tressy
1963: 8 baby girls named Tressy [debut]
1962: unlisted
1961: unlisted
Why?
Because of the fashion doll Tressy, whose hair could be made longer or shorter with the turn of a key. (The keyhole was on her lower back.)
She was manufactured by the American Character Doll Company and introduced to consumers in 1963 — just a few years after the original fashion doll, Barbie, hit the scene in 1959.
Tressy was the very first doll with “growing” hair. Various versions of the original Tressy — with different hair colors, or with dye-able hair — were available in the U.S. for several years.
American Character went out of business in 1968, and Ideal Toy Company ended up with the defunct company’s assets. The next year, Ideal introduced the popular Crissy doll, which utilized the same mechanism for adjusting hair length and had a similar influence on the baby name Crissy. Ideal also re-introduced its own (much larger) version of Tressy.
What do you think of Tressy as a baby name? Would you use it?
The Eiffel Tower was created by civil engineer Gustave Eiffel for the Paris Exposition of 1889, which marked the 100th anniversary of the French Revolution. It took more than two years to construct and was the tallest man-made structure in the world until 1930.
The name Eiffel has never been common enough in the U.S. to appear in the SSA’s baby name data, but I’ve found U.S. babies named Eiffel born as early as 1887 (the year that construction began*) by searching through vital records and the Social Security Death Index (SSDI).
Here are the best-documented, U.S.-born Eiffels I came across from the last years of the 1880s and the first years of the 1890s. Two-thirds of them are female.
In 1952, she was mentioned in a single-sentence news item: “Danville, Ind. — When Betty Jean Weesney, home from a recent European trip, brought back a souvenir replica of the Eiffel Tower in Paris, it was the logical gift for just one friend — Eiffel Tower Sutherland.”
By the way, did you know that Gustave Eiffel’s surname at birth was actually Bönickhausen?
In the early 1700s, Gustave’s ancestor Jean-Rene Bönickhausen relocated from a town in the mountainous Eifel region of Germany to the capital of France and began going by Eiffel (perhaps because it was easier to pronounce than Bönickhausen). So the official surname of this branch of the family tree became “Bönickhausen, dit Eiffel.” Gustave didn’t legally shorten it to Eiffel until 1879.
The word “Eifel” can be traced back to the Early Middle Ages, but the etymology is unknown.
What are your thoughts on Eiffel as a first name? Would you use it?
*The Eiffel Tower was being mentioned in the newspapers was early as mid-1886, but the name wasn’t set yet; it was being called things like “the Great Tower,” “the Tower of Paris,” and “the Eiffel Tall Tower.”
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